


four strong winds

by defcontwo



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Draft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 09:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4386680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sales pitch is irrelevant: this moment right here, sitting in the front of Kent’s piece of shit pickup truck, listening to “Party in the USA” on the radio at top volume -- that’s all the convincing Jack ever needed. </p><p>Or: Kent and Jack, a carnival, and the last gasp of the 34 days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	four strong winds

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to Ngozi for this beautiful comic, and to sparklyslug, for the wonderful beta work.

“I’m fuckin’ telling you, Zimms, you don’t know summer until you’ve spent a summer in New York. Carnivals, swimming, the whole nine fuckin’ yards.” 

Kent keeps saying shit like this, has probably said some variation of that exact sentence at least five times over the past twenty-four hours, and Jack wasn’t even trying to keep count. It settles low into his gut, a rising anxiety that gnaws but never quite worsens the way he almost wants it to because Jack doesn’t know how to make the words form in his mouth, doesn’t know how to tell Kent that he doesn’t have to keep convincing him. The sales pitch is irrelevant: this moment right here, sitting in the front of Kent’s piece of shit pickup truck, listening to “Party in the USA” on the radio at top volume -- that’s all the convincing Jack ever needed. 

There isn’t anywhere else in the world that Jack would rather be right now than rumbling along the highway from Montreal to Buffalo. For all that the wind keeps blowing dirt from the road into his eyes and into his hair, and for all that there’s a pretty decent chance that Kent hasn’t shut up for one second in the past two and a half hours, or really much at all in their whole day of driving. 

Jack wouldn’t hate a little silence, would probably like it better if it was just the two of them letting the road stretch out underneath them with some Johnny Cash playing softly in the background, but Jack feels a twist of guilt every time he thinks it. He has this fear that one day, he’ll fuck up and all of the shitty things that run through his mind will start to slip out, that Kent could look at him and just know. So, it doesn’t hurt to glance over at Kent every couple of hundred miles, just to check and make sure that he’s still smiling, still bright eyed and singing terrible pop music under his breath. Yeah, it’s foolish, but Jack can’t help himself from wondering, that with as close as they are, for as much as Kent gets him, if there might come a day when Kent can crack Jack wide open, and peer right inside of him to see everything that’s messy and raw on the inside. 

And the thing is -- the thing is, this could be the last time the two of them will get to be together like this. Jack didn’t miss the frantic edge in Kent’s voice when he first suggested it, like he was finally starting to realize what Jack’s known for months and months, now: that what they have, whatever they are to each other, it has an expiration date, and that expiration date keeps ticking closer and closer with every passing second. 

In two weeks, they’ll be drafted. In two weeks, they’ll be spirited away to different parts of the continent, probably, and they’ll no longer be teammates, no longer be the dynamic duo, no longer the captain and his fleet-footed alternate. 

Instead, they’ll be rivals. Instead, they’ll just be two dumb rookies standing on opposite sides of the ice. 

But for now -- for now, they’ll have this.

~

“You sure you want to wear that here, huh, Parse?” Jack says, leaning over to lightly flick at the brim of Kent’s Rangers snapback. “Might get you beat up or something.”

Kent sticks out his tongue at Jack and then determinedly lifting up his cap, turning it around so that it faces backwards. “Any shitty fucking Sabres fan will have to kiss my ass first if they want to start something.” 

“What, no hometown loyalty, eh?” Jack says, bumping Kent with his hip as they make their way out of the dusty, makeshift parking lot and towards the carnival proper. 

Kent barks out a laugh. “Fuck off. You know I was born in Poughkeepsie, that’s Rangers territory, Zimms.” 

There’s nothing but bright lights in the distance ahead of them, the Boardwalk Carnival opening up in front of their very eyes. There must be hundreds and hundreds of people, and Jack spares himself a flash of panic, thinks of all the people out there who might recognize him, might recognize _them_ , might want to talk about the draft, and their futures. 

But he left his jacket, with his bottle of pills safety nestled inside of the front pocket, on the floor of Kent’s pickup truck. It’s too late to go back now -- he knows how Kent gets, whenever Jack gets out his pills, all tight-lipped and silent, like he’s holding back a million fucking things he wants to be saying, and Jack doesn’t have the energy for any of that right now. The last thing he wants to do is fight and anyways, Kent gets worried for no good fucking reason. 

“Hey,” Kent says, stopping right in the middle of the entrance to the carnival grounds, forcing a disgruntled-looking family to detour around them, and pressing the tips of his fingers to Jack’s elbow, light as anything, but still grounding Jack, anyways. “Something wrong, dude?” 

Jack shakes himself. “Nah. Just thinking about how I’m going to beat your dumb ass at all of the carnival games you kept telling me about on the way down here.” 

“Fuck you, man, I’m a skee ball champion,” Kent says, grinning up at Jack, sharp as anything, his hand still on Jack’s elbow, leaning well into Jack’s space in a way that lands somewhere on the side of not so platonic, and Jack will never understand this, how Kent finds it so easy to lay everything out there, to be so fucking fearless all of the time. “I’ll wipe the floor with your Canadian ass.” 

And because Jack’s a sucker, and because Kent makes him a little more impulsive than he’s comfortable with, most days, Jack leans down, lips grazing the shell of Kent’s ears, eliciting a shiver that sends a thrill of victory running up and down Jack’s spine. “Wanna bet?”

~

Jack loses at skee ball, miserably, and Kent crows about it for half the night because he’s an asshole, but it only lasts right up until Jack smokes him at the rifle range.

So Jack gets him right back with ten straight minutes of chirping because he just can’t help himself. 

“But I thought Americans were supposed to be good with guns,” Jack says, for about the third time, in the middle of opening up his wallet to pay for funnel cake for them both.

Kent groans. “Okay, I get it, Zimms. I’m a bad American, you’re a bad Canadian, and if we’re ever stuck fighting off some zombies for survival, I’ll give you the fucking gun.” 

“That’s all I ask,” Jack says, and Kent rolls his eyes, pointedly, which charms a laugh out of the girl running the funnel cake booth. 

“You boys enjoy your funnel cake, huh,” the girl says, and Jack shifts, suddenly entirely too aware of the way she’s staring a little too intently at Kent. “Maybe come back and say hi to me later, alright?” 

Kent flashes her a quick grin, and lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe,” but he’s rolling his eyes in Jack’s direction as soon as they’re turned away from her, and Jack embarrasses himself with the rush of relief that runs through him. It’s not like he thought that Kent would actually take her up on it. 

They find a pocket tucked away from the crowds to eat their funnel cake, Kent lifting himself up on top of an abandoned booth, letting his feet dangle down in front of him like a little kid, and all but shoving the funnel cake into his face. 

“Do you see yourself when you do these things?” 

“I don’t know, do I?” Kent says. There’s powdered sugar gathered at the corners of his lips, and Jack reaches a hand out, unthinking, wiping it away with his thumb. Jack should really move away, should make space between them because sure, they’re tucked away in a corner, but right around that corner, there are hundreds of people. 

Still, he hovers, too close, always much, much too close, so it’s not a surprise when Kent leans forward, sucking the edge of Jack’s thumb into his mouth, and licking away the sugar. 

Jack inhales sharply, and only just barely resists the impulse to follow that up with a kiss. 

Instead, he drops his head down onto Kent’s shoulder, and lets out a groan. 

Kent laughs, and Jack can feel the rumble of his chest pressed close to his own. “I think that makes the score America: 2, Canada: 1, babe.” 

“I hate you,” Jack murmurs into the soft cotton of Kent’s t-shirt. 

“Liar,” Kent says, cupping the back of Jack’s neck with one hand, the whorls of his thumb tracing patterns into Jack’s skin, and Jack barely has the time to protest it when Kent suddenly stops because then he’s nudging Jack with one knee and pushing him up and away. 

“Come on, loser, let’s go find the photobooth.”

~

The bed of Kent’s pickup truck is a couple of steps up from the sagging couch in Kent’s former billet family’s basement in terms of comfort, but not by much. Jack could protest it, could push the issue and insist that they go back to Kent’s family’s place for the night, probably. Even if he doesn’t have a clue where the hell they are right now, only knows that after they left the fairgrounds they hopped into Kent’s truck and drove for an hour straight in whatever direction seemed easiest and less congested. Sacking out in an empty lot off the beaten path, just beyond an unmarked park, seemed as good a solution as any when Kent got sick of driving.

But there’s a cool breeze cutting through the summer heat, the night sky opening up clear and bright and as beautiful as anything Jack’s ever seen above them. Anyways, Kent’s a little weird about staying with his family -- a little weird about the step-father that he’s never warmed up to, and a little weird about the city that he got completely uprooted to at aged ten and never quite got around to liking all that much. With the obvious exception of, apparently, the Boardwalk Carnival. 

Jack kind of gets the sense that everything about Kent’s life here never quite took; maybe that’s what always made it so easy for him to leave. 

“You’re thinking pretty loud over there, Zimms,” Kent says, shifting onto his side to face Jack. There’s a lamp post about ten feet away that casts a long, yellow glow, and it lights Kent’s face right up, lets Jack see how messy his hair has gotten, how it’s all curled up and staticky, pushing out in every direction. And Kent’s smile is a little softer, a little lazier, in that way it always is post-orgasm. 

If only Jack had his camera. If only there was enough light for it to really make any kind of a difference at all even if he did. 

They don’t have a whole lot of time left but maybe if Jack keeps taking all these moments and adding them all up, pressing them down into black and white, he’ll finally reach a point where that won’t matter so much anymore. 

“Hey,” Jack murmurs. “Can I see that photo strip from earlier?” 

“What?” Kent says, at first slow to react, and then, “oh yeah, gimme a sec, I stuck it in my jacket pocket.” Kent fumbles and flails his way out of the sleeping bag they’re both entangled within, reaching for where his jacket lies at the edge of the truck bed. 

“Real smooth, Parson,” Jack cracks. 

“Here you go,” Kent says, too blissed out to rise to the chirp as he flops back down with a thud and dropping the photostrip onto Jack’s chest. 

It’s a series of four photos: in the first, they’re nothing more than a black and white blur because Kent couldn’t figure out how long until the machine started snapping photos and he’d accidentally moved so that all you can see in the photo is his shoulder and that dumb Rangers cap taking up most of the lens. The second one is normal, just the two of them squished in side by side, staring straight at the camera, surprised again when the flash went off. 

The third -- the third makes something ache in Jack’s chest, raw and unbidden. Kent’s got both arms wrapped around Jack from behind, his chin tucked over Jack’s shoulder, eyes screwed shut and a dopey grin on his face that’s filled with the easy affection that Kent doles out so readily when they’re alone. But that’s not the part that gives Jack pause. 

It’s that he’s not so sure he even recognizes the other person in the frame as himself. He looks like any normal eighteen year old in the world. He looks happy. He doesn’t look like he’d spent a good part of the night wishing that he could sneak back to the truck for his pills. 

In the fourth one, they’re kissing. Jack’s not sure which of the last two is more damning. 

“Keep it,” Kent says, a little too flippantly. Jack doesn’t want to know what Kent saw on his face just now; he’s pretty sure whatever it was, it brought them that much closer to Jack’s fear -- that much closer to Jack’s guts spilled out onto the bed of this truck for Kent to pick his way through. “Just remember to scan me a copy when we get back to your house, alright?” 

“Yeah, okay,” Jack murmurs, and lets Kent tangle their legs together, lets Kent drape one arm across Jack’s chest for all that it’s way too hot for this, with so much sweat and soaked through cotton pressing them flush together. 

The smart thing to do would be to start pushing Kent away, to create some distance, to get himself used to this inevitable fracture that’s bearing down upon them. 

The smartest thing -- well, the smartest thing would’ve been refusing to go on this trip entirely. 

It’s two weeks until the draft. They have an even 48 hours until they’re expected in Toronto, until they’re dragged all the way into the media frenzy that’s awaiting them, feet first. 

There will be a lot of people. A lot of cameras, and a lot of interviews, and they’ll have to stand up straight, and keep a careful distance, and smile like their agents always tell them to, friendly but composed. 

There will be a lot of photos taken of Jack in the coming weeks, and not a single fucking one will get anywhere close to the person Jack was in that photo booth tonight. 

Jack keeps the photo strip clutched tight in his hand all night, and doesn’t sleep at all.

**Author's Note:**

> [the soul-crushing reference photo, FYI.](http://softbrah.tumblr.com/post/124491235982)


End file.
